


Guardian

by meteornight



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen, Original Character(s), Original Character-centric, POV Original Character, Time War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-24
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 14:19:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 8,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7511593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meteornight/pseuds/meteornight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gallifrey is on the brink of war, a war which is slowly spiraling out of their control. Three young Gallifreyans must choose to either watch as their planet falls apart, or to find a way to escape into the unknown before the Last Great Time War traps them in its web of paradoxes. But how long can they run before the Time War catches up to them?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Duck & Cover

The sky was clear one afternoon, a polished expanse of copper from which twin suns shined. Below this alien sky, two girls who found it to be familiar stood, waiting for a friend. His name was Angelowryredred, of no relation to one particular Castellan, or so he insisted. That of course, was a lie, since he was of the House of RedLooms, but they let him and his lie be.  
People lied a lot on Gallifrey.  
But as children of thirteen years of age, they hadn’t yet learned to mind the lies, only to accept them, or at least the more believable ones.  
At long last the boy arrived. He ran out from the Academy building, his shoes hitting the pavement and his bag hitting his side awkwardly with every stride. He looked small from far away, and was still small when he reached the girls’ side. He was ten years old.  
“Bernadette, Talitha,” he said, out of breath. “Sorry I’m late.” He gave a slight bow, but his awkwardness only succeeded in making the girls laugh. Bernadette tried to hide it with a hand, but Talitha did not, her grin spreading wide enough to dimple her cheeks.  
Once the laughter was contained, they started to walk home together, just as they always did. As they followed the brick-paved path into the city proper, Talitha heard Angelo hum a somewhat familiar tune. After a short while, she recognized it as something from a duck-and-cover lesson that she’d seen as a loomling.  
They passed several shops with their wares and posters, then entered the neighborhoods, then their own neighborhood with its neat arrangement of houses.  
Angelo’s parents thanked them for bringing their son home, their red hair as bright as their smiles.  
Bernadette waved goodbye and went inside her own home, leaving Talitha alone in the square.  
She looked up at the sky then wandered into her house, closing the door behind her.

Inside was darkness, then some light. It was empty apart from her and the furniture, so she went over to provide it some company.  
Living off Academy grounds had its ups and downs. It was just her, the house, and for one minute a day, her father. He was always in various stages of leaving the house, forever speaking to her in passing.  
“ _Sit up straight. Is your work done? I’ll be out for some time. I saw your grades. Your mother wouldn’t approve._ ”  
The last one was her personal favorite.  
She leaned back in her chair and put her shoes on the table, covering her unfinished homework in dirt. She looked across at her mother, who smiled. She always smiled, and in the picture frame beside her own, Talitha’s father stared back disapprovingly.  
She stuck out her tongue at his portrait in reply, picked up a stylus, and tossed it over, hitting the name beneath it. The tool landed on the ‘o’ in ‘Roaldin’, striking dead center.  
Perfect.  
He deserved it, she thought. He was out far more often now, his presence growing rarer to the point of unexpectedness. He had left her completely alone.  
But Talitha didn’t mind, she liked it that way. She told herself that she liked it that way. As the dalek ships grew closer and closer, she all the more assured herself that she liked it that way.  
She of all people should not have known the locations of the enemy, but everyone who cared knew. All it took was a telescope and a healthy distrust of whatever the radio said to discover that Gallifrey was at war, and they were losing.  
There were only a few who bothered. It was far easier to just go about business in usual, but in her thirteen years she hadn’t been able to get a clear idea of what was supposed to be “usual”.  
She took her shoes off her papers, retrieved her stylus, and got to work, humming as she worked.  
_“Duck and cover, cover your face and neck...”_


	2. Starry Night

It was midnight when Talitha jumped out of bed, tied back her hair, slipped on her shoes, and climbed out her bedroom window. The action was practiced, almost habitual. In moments, she was on the ground, running down the street under the light of the moons.  
She had things to do that were best not done in daylight.  
The buildings had thinned out and her breath was coming out in gasps by the time Talitha reached her destination. Leaning against a wall, she stopped to laugh at her own stupidity. Her long brown hair looked wild behind her, and her shoes were coated in dust, but she had made it. She had made it to the junkyard.  
It was a labyrinth of towering scrap metal, most of its contents methodically disassembled before being placed there. It was almost a natural birthplace of new inventions and ideas, pieced together from what was left behind.  
There was, however, one near-finished product there that Talitha had come to love. It was an abandoned Type 120 TARDIS with everything but the flight codes intact. The wiring had been damaged as well, but Talitha had fixed that with some help from Bernadette and some tips from Jaydin, the only actual mechanic she knew. Angelo had tackled the flight codes with some convincing and dares, but the algorithm he had made would take more than a little time to generate the missing pieces. So, while they waited, she visited the lonely machine. The others did too, but although she hated to admit it, Talitha felt lonely as well.  
It was disguised as a wooden dresser, its white paint chipped and its drawers dented. It opened at her touch, swinging wide like a door. The structure was lying on its side, the interior tilting away from her, but she stepped inside anyway. The world reoriented to to suit her new perspective, and soon she was inside a large console room with a ceiling that reached upward like a cathedral’s. In the past few weeks it felt as if the room had grown warmer, its lights not dim, but soft. It had a sleepy feeling about it, something in the way that its central column rose and fell as slowly and steadily as a breath.  
Talitha slipped off her shoes and padded about the room, taking in its familiarity. She was a lovely thing, Talitha thought. When she had first stumbled across the Type 120, she’d felt drawn to it, as if it was calling to her, or to someone, or to anyone. In that way it had always felt familiar- It had always felt like home.  
The girl wandered to an adjacent room, the one that Angelo had named the Star Room. The TARDIS had built it for him so that he could memorize all the stars that were visible in Gallifrey’s night sky, or at least the ones that were in his textbooks. The transduction barrier that protected the planet had grown too thick to see anything but the hazy suns and moons with the naked eye, and Angelo had found the star charts difficult to memorize when they were confined to dusty pages. And so the Star Room was born. It made Angelo feel better, Talitha supposed, to feel that the Type 120 served some educational purpose, but in truth it simply served to distract him from the illegality of it all.  
Talitha never minded. She took a certain pleasure in breaking the law, since her father, an officer of the law, was too busy enforcing it to stop her personally. Besides, she wouldn’t have known what proper stargazing was supposed to feel like in any other way.  
She looked up and saw the likenesses of Polarfrey and Karn, then looked past them at the pinpricks of light which freckled the ceiling that posed as the sky. She started to count them, going past the number she could usually achieve outside by several hundred, then a few thousand before she gave up and dragged herself home.


	3. Fundamental Force

Talitha woke up, looked out the window, and counted the stars.  
“One, two.”  
She had counted the maximum amount of stars visible from Gallifrey’s surface, day or night.  
She dressed for school, grabbed her bag, and left the house. Her father said goodbye to her, but she barely heard him at first. He was a soft-spoken man and his words held nothing beneath them. He had no psychic presence, making him difficult to notice, even when he was there. But today Talitha noticed him, and today she said goodbye, although she could not tell in what way her father had said those words to her.  
She closed the door behind her.  
She went across the way to Bernadette's house, then upon collecting her friend, moved on to Angelo’s house. They went down the road together as always, talking and laughing down its winding length. At its end, they parted ways.

Absentmindedly, Talitha copied down something regarding the strong nuclear force, then paused to chew on her stylus. It was a bad habit that she wanted to kick for some time, but it kept her busy as the board was slowly being filled with numbers and symbols that she was too tired to understand. She started to connect them into constellations, daydreaming she was still in the Star Room. The force of gravity is the weakest fundamental force, and the weak nuclear force is stronger, followed by the electromagnetic force, followed by the strong nuclear force, followed by the silent force that became known when the world went blank, followed by the primal urge Talitha felt to cover her face and neck and scream.


	4. Fundamental Forces

Talitha dressed for school, grabbed her bag, and headed for the door. Her father said goodbye to her as he brushed past on his way to work. Talitha watched him go, but didn't reply.  
She couldn’t tell if he meant it, or if the words were just automatic, an aside made like clockwork as he wound his way through the day.  
Talitha crossed the way to Bernadette's house, where the doors was opened by the girl's mother, Lady Vatusia.  
She was a proper Time Lady, an almost regal figure who held some odd job in the Gallifreyan government.  
She turned and called up the stairs. "Bernadettevanya, Angelowryredred, it's time to go!"  
Both children ran down the stairs, books in hand.  
Angelo's parents were out of town, but Lady Vatusia had been kind enough to take him in for a time. It was either that or send him off to the Academy to live, something that the boy had never done before.   
They gathered their belongings and went down the road together as always, talking and laughing down its winding length. At its end, they parted ways.

Bernadette read the bland texts of her forefathers, trying to remember the antiqued vocabulary and diction. She read and waited for the world to end, or the day to end, whichever came first. With the throbbing headache she had, she couldn't tell which one she would prefer. She tried to remember the fundamental forces up to the strong nuclear force, which held protons and neutrons together. What came after, she couldn’t remember.

At the end of the day they ambled home with Angelo trailing behind as always, working away on his assignments before he even got home.   
Bernadette kept him from running into anything or tripping over loose paving stones, at least until Talitha stole his bag and forced him to chase her down the street, and a little farther, his short legs no match for her longer ones. Eventually, he caught her, sending them both tumbling to the ground, tangled together and screaming with laughter.


	5. Seeing Double

Talitha woke, dragged herself downstairs, and fixed herself breakfast. Besides, she was the only one around to do it. She peeked out the window to see what kind of day it would be. The sky looked dark, a deep, dusty orange. It would be a day for staying inside.  
Pulling the curtains closed again, she paused to listen to the sounds that came from the other side of her door.  
 _Thunk._  
Something hit the transduction barrier.  
Talitha put a flashlight into her bag, along with her books and assignments, just in case the sky would grow any darker. It sounded like a storm was brewing out there.  
The days were growing jumbled again, just as they had sometime before, some time she could not place. She knew that someday things would not go as planned, and someday that would be fixed, leading to the looping, dizzying mess she found herself living out each day, not knowing how many times she had before.  
She grabbed her bag and dashed across the small plaza, jumping over the looser cobblestones until she reached Bernadette’s house.  
The door opened and she slipped inside, stealing a glance at the sky.  
It sounded like a battle was brewing up there.  
She wondered what her father was up to as Lady Vatusia rounded up her growing collection of children and sent them on their way.  
They ran toward the Academy, robes billowing in the wind.  
Bernadette wondered if they’d have to stay there soon, where there were bunkers and disaster plans that were slightly better than “duck and cover”.  
Talitha said that she’d rather run away then stay at the Academy. She wanted to fix the TARDIS and run away, anywhere. She was terrible at running, always tripping over things, but she was getting better. She was starting to take after her Cousin in that way, and the boy had been trouble.  
Bernadette had told her that she’d follow her friend wherever she went, although they’d have to take little Angelo with them. She couldn’t tell if that had been a lie or not, just to make Talitha feel better. Gallifrey was a wreck, but it was home.  
They slowed once they reached the Academy, stopping briefly to nod to the Chancellery Guards, who nodded back. Bernadette urged Angelo on when he spent too long eyeing the guards’ uniforms, a mix of boyish excitement and jealousy in his eyes.  
They parted ways.  
But there was something lingering in the air, a disturbingly familiar sense of dread that made them wish they never left their homes or each other. The feeling stalked Angelo through his daily recitations, into his classes, and every second of the day. Some of the day’s levity, such as Gualtier accidentally setting a sleeve of his robes on fire during chemistry class, dispersed the tension they all felt. It was something difficult for a child to place, but some knowledge of it was imparted through the instructors’ stuttering voices, an omnipresent undertone of fear.  
Regardless of what happened before or after, it was an unnaturally cloudy day when a particularly inopportune fixed point in time came to pass. The transduction barrier was thick, the thickest it had been since a certain wild-eyed man was sent to Skaro in a vain attempt to stop that cloudy afternoon from coming to pass.  
It was that afternoon that most consider to be the beginning of the Last Great Time War.  
Teachers ushered their students into the lower levels of the school buildings, setting loose a barrage of questions, an endless stream of where-are-we-goings, when-will-we-go-homes, is-this-something-to-do-with me-almost-shooting-Wendalases, can-I-get-my-blanket-from-the-dormitories, and should-I-be-scareds.  
Bernadette looked behind her as she descended the stairs, watching as the dim sky was lit with laserfire so bright that it turned the heavens gold. Doors closed, and all was dark.  
Screens chased the shadows away with their light.  
“Computer, draw me a picture.” a child whispered. A group of their friends gathered around to watch, critiquing the creativity of the artistic artificial intelligence.  
They tried to distract themselves. It wasn’t as if they had not been in such a situation before, or so part of them thought.  
Bernadette called out for Talitha, and Talitha replied, a comforting presence in the corner of Bernadette’s mind, until the psychic chatter of the Academy students grew to thick to pick out any single voice from the crowd. She stood, alone in the throng, until Angelo found her.  
“I wasn’t ready for this.” Angelo said. “And now I’m afraid.”  
“No one is ready for things like this.” Bernadette replied.  
“I’m not ready.” he repeated, eyes wide and on the verge of tears. “I know what they say about looking out windows at times like these, but…” He ran a worried hand through his rust red curls until Bernadette held him, letting him sob things she didn’t understand. “I want my mom back.” he cried. “And I want my dad and I want them here not me there but I’m going to go and I don’t know if I want to…”  
He was quiet for a moment again as he wiped the tears from his face. “I want to go home.”  
“We’ll go home after this.”  
“I didn’t mean your house.” he snapped. “I want to go home.”  
“I know.”


	6. School Stuff

"Do you remember what Talitha said?" Angelo asked, although it was more like a statement than a question.  
"She says a lot of things." Bernadette replied. She knew where the boy was going, but she didn't want to admit it.  
"About if things go badly." he finished.  
Bernadette sighed. "Yes, I do."  
"Do you think that's a good idea?"  
"I don't think she's ever had a good idea."  
"But what if it's bad out there?"  
"Then she would have had her first half-decent idea."  
He laughed, making Bernadette realize that she couldn't remember the last time he had. It had been weeks, she thought, some strange weeks when he had been inconsolable. But it seemed to Bernadette that the boy felt most at ease when everything was coming to an end, as if he took comfort in the world falling apart around him. It was the only certain thing in his small world.

Angelo turned to his left, an unusually deliberate move, and pulled Bernadette along with him through the crowd. "Can you call Tally?" he asked as they walked.  
"I can try." Bernadette replied. She found her friend somewhere in the tangle of thoughts that filled the dark room, and Talitha found Bernadette in the mess of people.  
"We'll have to run for it." Talitha said, "At least once we find our way out of here. Bernadette, did you catch any leads as to where we are and going?"  
Bernadette soon her head. "I'm just following Angelo."  
"So Angelo, how do you know where you're going?" Talitha asked.  
"I've been down here before. I know my way around."  
"So what's down here?" Talitha asked.  
"Just school stuff." Angelo replied a bit too quickly.  
She let him and his lie be for some time.

Angelo pulled open a hatch that led out into the street, a mess of broken stone and glass. They helped pull each other out, careful not to step on anything sharp. In the dim daylight, Talitha could see that he was carrying his schoolbag in his arms, holding it close like a comfort object.  
She looked down the road. "The TARDIS is about a kilometer and a half away. That's not too far."  
Angelo pulled his bag closer. "That's very far."  
"Shut up."  
"But it is!"  
"It's only a mile. You've gone a mile before, haven't you?"  
Angelo nodded. "But now isn't a very nice time to go a mile." He slung his bag over his shoulder. "But I guess I can try."  
Bernadette took him by the hand. "That's the spirit, kid."

They sprinted down the road, not daring to look behind them. Nothing seemed real in those moments as the city flew past in a blur. The storefronts and their posters were aflame and the road's cobbles were torn, reaching up for the ashen sky.  
Angelo glanced behind him, yelled for Bernadette to get down and she fell to the pavement, shielding her head as her knees scraped stone and a flash cracked overhead, followed by a second. Talitha pulled her up. They ran, faster this time, not daring to look back out of fear of what they'd see. As the pavement turned to metal, Talitha could her Angelo's footsteps behind her, sharp like the boots of a Chancellery Guard. The children scanned the heaps of scrap metal for the TARDIS, but couldn't find her. Frantic, they dove behind a familiar discarded control terminal. Talitha peeked over its edge, trying to quiet the ragged breaths that tore at her throat. She found herself staring directly into a single electric blue eye.  
She froze, every muscle in her body rigid with fear.  
Bernadette pulled her down.  
"It's a dalek." Talitha whispered. "It's a bloody-"  
She was cut off by an explosion, louder than a thousand staser bolts, one that left he ears ringing. She hauled herself to her feet what remained of the metal monster. It was nearly indistinguishable from the other scrap metal in the dump, with the sole exception of the steaming chunk of flesh that once lived inside the dalekanium casing.  
Talitha couldn't tell if she wanted to vomit or cry.  
Angelo took her by the hand. "Come on, the TARDIS is here. We're going to make it out. She saved us. Tally, come on..."  
She only stared.


	7. Lower

"Are you okay down there?" Bernadette asked.  
Talitha nodded, pulling her blanket closer.  
"You can't hide under the console forever."  
"I can if you keep bringing me tea and snacks."  
"That's low."  
Bernadette sat down beside her. "You're lower."  
They sat in silence for a moment, taking in the hum of the engines and the distant patter of debris against the outside of the timeship.  
"I called my mom." Bernadette said, breaking the silence.  
"What did she say?"  
"Run." Bernadette looked up at the underside of the console, tracing the circular etched into the polished metal with her fingers.  
" _Type 120._ " it read. " _Model Number 347. Property of..._ " Her hand found its way back to the start. " _Type 120. Model Number 347._ "  
Bernadette sighed. "She told me to stay safe however I can, and that she loved me."  
Talitha looked at her, her head tilting ever so slightly to the side. "So you're staying with us?"  
Bernadette nodded, letting the sound of debris and laserfire answer for her.  
Talitha tackled Bernadette with a hug, knocking her to the floor, blanket, tea, and all. "So-you're-staying-with-us-for-real-like-a-really-long-sleepover-except-this-time-your-mum-won't-take-away-your-laser-cutter-because-we-broke-the-balcony-and-part-of-the-first-floor-while-welding-metal-and-we're-gonna-have-so-much-fun!"  
Her words turned to a squeal of delight.  
Bernadette fought her way to her feet. "Tally, are you hyper or something?"  
She nodded vigorously. "Yeah, sugar and non-decaf! Now come on, I need to show you something!" She ducked out from her hiding place and was soon pulling Bernadette down the hall.  
The pale polished floors and wood paneled walls flew past, a maze of doors and wooden floors and pale polished walls, until Talitha stopped, letting Bernadette slide to a halt on her socks, ending up several meters past her destination.  
“This is my room!” Talitha announced, opening a door on her right.  
Bernadette peeked inside and saw that she was right. It was an exact replica of her room. It had Talitha’s bed, her pictures, her books, her papers, her homework...  
“Did you run away from home?” Bernadette asked.  
Talitha shrugged. “I guess.”  
“When did this happen?”  
“Three weeks ago?” She sat on her bed, bouncing on the bedsprings. “But does it count if my dad didn’t come home first? I was starting to get hungry. And lonely. And something else, I guess…” She picked up one of her plush toys and held it to her chest.  
Bernadette realized that most of the items were probably genuine.  
Talitha changed the subject with a smile.   
“Hey Bernadette, do you want to get something to eat?”

Soon they were sorting through the cabinets of the cozy kitchen, standing on their tiptoes in a vain effort to reach a jar of magenta jam. Somehow, it seemed that the self managed to stay just out of reach, regardless of every chair they stood on and every extra inch they stretched. They settled for some warm pastries without the sugary jam on top, which they ate while Talitha relayed the ground rules to Bernadette.  
Go to school in the morning.  
Only the ship is allowed to pilot the ship.  
No fighting.  
Don’t break anything.  
Have fun.  
They found something to eat for dinner and soon they were too tired to talk about the times they’d tried to find the edge of the TARDIS and other dumb things they’d done before to keep their minds off things and not fall asleep.  
They drifted off, side by side, leaning on one another, just as they always did.  
Things were different, but they were as they should be.


	8. Console

Angelo paced, unable to overcome his restlessness. He liked the ship and he knew its halls well, but some more regimented part of him refused to be limited to the walls and halls and admittedly pretty cool book collections. No matter how much he liked them, he felt certain that there was a certain part of the day that should be reserved for walking nowhere, so he did. He paced about the TARDIS console room until TARDIS sat him down and asked him what he thought he was going to achieve by marching around like that for hours on end, or if there was at least something other than that that he wanted to do.  
Angelo shrugged. When looking up at the screen of the TARDIS console for the jumpseat, the neatly printed words didn’t seem to offer much other than neatly organized rooms, a small world that looked like it had never been lived in, trying to be inviting, trying to care.  
“Would you like to go somewhere?” she wrote.  
He nodded, not quite sure what she meant.  
“Where would you like to go?”  
“Where can I go?” the boy asked.  
“Anywhere.”  
“Anywhere?”  
“And anywhen.”  
He looked at the console for a moment, confused, then he smiled, his eyes alight. “The algorithm!” he exclaimed. “Did it work, did you get the flight codes?” He was leaning forward now, anxiously awaiting the words that would come next.  
The word was yes.  
Angelo’s smile lit the room. “I want to see the stars!” he blurted. “I want to see the stars and the open sky and cities made of crystal without a crack in their walls and oceans so deep you can’t touch the bottom with creatures so strange… I want to see everything!”  
The timeship felt for a moment that she had found a kindred spirit, another person who yearned to fly.  
“...But technically speaking that would be illegal in more ways than one…”  
The moment was over, but the timeship was quite sure that she could change his mind.  
The engines revved, the switches flipped, and the air hummed with excitement as the ship rushed off to the open sky, leaving the Citadel’s cracked dome behind in search of something not only better, but fantastic.


	9. Conifers & Caniforms

So where are we going?" Talitha asked.  
"Pulchra." Angelo replied.  
"Where's that?"  
Angelo shrugged. "It's a planet, one of the ones with huge oceans and weird stuff like that."  
Talitha looked across the dinner table at him, then back down at her plate. "Are you excited?"  
"No." he said, almost defensively.  
Bernadette smirked. "How do you spell it?"  
Angelo replied instantaneously. "P-U-L-C-H-R-A."  
Bernadette laughed. "So you are excited."  
"I am not."  
"Oh yes you are."  
"I am not! In the contrary, I am an upstanding citizen."  
Talitha joined in. "You're a renegade." she sang. "You got a Level 5 planet and everything."  
"I don't got it, and I don't have it either."  
"Oh, and now you're a Time Lord."  
Angelowryredred was fuming, and Talitha felt ashamed of what she had said, but she couldn't take it back.

The ship had expertly defused the situation with dessert, leaving everyone tired and smiling.  
"It's time for bed." the TARDIS said over the loudspeaker.  
The children complained, said they weren't tired, but in truth they felt absolutely exhausted.  
Eventually, they went to their rooms, saying goodnight and closing their doors that faced one another, just as they should be.

The day was for learning, for learning things and words that were unfamiliar and strange. The ship gave them books that spoke of flora and fauna, and concepts like "verdant" and "chlorophyll". There were places and things, maps and diagrams, and a plethora of information that was new and interesting. They never had learned about anything beyond their own planetary system. There was Gallifrey, Polarfrey, and Karn. Nothing more. There were stars, of course, but nothing other than their light mattered. There was no life, there were no places. Only the world that they illuminated mattered.  
But it seemed like there was more to learn, more and more that came with every book and every page. Every printed word brought a new sense of reality to the world they had been forbidden to touch. It was infinite, it was beautiful, and it was to be respected in all its terrifying vastness.

Conifer. Plateau. Tundra. Glacier.  
The landscape of Pulchra would someday be home to intelligent life, foreign settlers who would create cities like the ones they had once known, tall, strong, and powerful.  
But now the peaceful forests were home to animals with fur, claws, and teeth. They were kind, as they had known no hunters.  
The air was fresh and clean, and it somehow made the hours of study feel worth it.

"Look, that's a conifer!" Angelo said, pointing to a nearby tree.  
"They're all conifers." Talitha said tiredly. "You don't need to point out every-" She smiled. "Look, it's a caniform!"  
Bernadette and Angelo ran over to get a closer look, leaving the ship behind. She shifted and caught up.  
Talitha knew words to describe the TARDIS: Type 120, agile, versatile bipedal, anthropoid. Type 120s could blend in, even in a crowd.  
She also knew words to describe the animal she saw: Caniform, mammalian, Ursidae. But Talitha could not understand its behavior, so she asked.  
"Why does it always stand between us and the smaller ones?"  
"Because it's their mother. It wants to keep them safe."  
"But I just want to look at them. They're so fuzzy and cute..."  
"It doesn't know that."  
Talitha looked up at the TARDIS' dark eyes, then around her long brown coat, the one with too many pockets. "But you're doing the same thing now."  
She shrugged. "I suppose I am."  
"Look, it's another conifer!" Angelo said.  
The timeship laughed. "Yes, Angelo, it is."

The rest of the day was spent learning the names of planets, not for any reason in particular, but simply because the children wanted to. There were planets named for foreign gods, planets named for colors, and planets named for numbers. There were planets named “Ravolox” and “Mondas”, and planets with names that were too hard to pronounce.  
Bernadette and Talitha jumped over tree roots and chased each other around the twists and turns between the foliage, untiring, while Angelo rode on the TARDIS’ shoulders, looking up at the sky.  
Finally, Angelo brought his gaze down from its place in the treetops and asked the timeship a question.  
“347.” the ship said in reply. Her smile did not seemed bothered by it, but she seemed to want to let the matter be.  
“What's your name?” asked Talitha, her curiosity latching onto the most obvious yet unanswered question.  
“It’s 347.” the ship replied. The number was her name, and she let it be.  
“Can I call you something else?” Angelo asked.  
“Can I call you ‘mother’?” Talitha asked.  
The TARDIS stopped in her tracks, exchanging the conversational snapping of twigs for silence. “Talithayevestrandaveri,” she said, “You cannot call me that.”  
Bernadette looked up at her challengingly. “Mom.”  
“No.” 347 replied.  
“Mom.” Talitha repeated.  
“No.”  
“Mom!” Talitha said again, running up beside the ship, jumping to catch her attention.  
“Mom!” Bernadette said, the word mixing with laughter.  
“Mom!” the girls said, over and over. “Mom!”  
It was a game to them, and eventually the TARDIS gave in.  
“Fine! I won’t be your parent, but I’ll be your guardian at least.” she snapped.  
The children cheered. “Sort of mom!”  
Their guardian shushed them. “Be quiet, Angelo is sleeping.”  
And her children listened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"Caniform, mammalian, Ursidae"_  
>  Bears are mammals of the family Ursidae. Bears are classified as caniforms, or doglike carnivorans.  
> In other words, the girl wanted quite desperately to pet a bear, or to have a pet bear, but that would never be allowed aboard the TARDIS, no matter how cute it is.


	10. The People You Meet In The City

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crew goes on an underwhelming field trip with unexpected results.

Study then travel. It was an annoying but fair trade, and Talitha had to admit it was growing on her. In the past few months she'd somehow managed to have fun, as long as she didn't think too long about some things.  
Things like Gallifrey and her other friends: Jaydin, Theta, Salyava...  
So she didn't.  
Angelo, however, seemed to bring up Gallifrey whenever possible. It wasn't necessarily that he thought Gallifrey was _better_ than anywhere else, he insisted, but everywhere else could not come close to Gallifrey in any respect.  
Angelo most strongly believed this when it came to the subject of architecture.  
Unfortunately, architecture was the exact reason why Talitha wanted to travel to New York City.  
It was something about the delicate carvings on the buildings and fountains, she said.  
That cannot compare to Gallifrey's spires and domes, he said.  
There was something in the way that glass and metal blended with blue sky, she said.  
They was futile, pointless, and primitive he said.  
"Please, Angelo, don't be difficult." the TARDIS said. "You'll get to pick where we go after Bernadette."  
He was slightly less difficult.

Traveling would be challenging. There were roughly eight hundred languages spoken in that single city, and they were to choose one to learn and practice during their trip.  
The signs would be in a language called English, so they decided to learned English together.  
Past, present, and future were human concepts that made translating difficult. There were far fewer tenses than there were in Gallifreyan. The distinction between them all was vague, not entirely dependent on normal things like class, time, and location. There were no gender neutral pronouns. Men could not wear skirts, dresses, or robes, due to societal convention, which added insult to injury in Angelo's eyes.  
He loved dresses. But he also loved books, and there were many to choose from in his target language. He caught on faster than the others, and soon he was reading every English book he could find in the TARDIS library, although he had a growing preference for fantasy.

_"Max the Wolf was a wolf in exactly the same way that foothills are made of real feet and a tiger shark is part tiger, which is to say, not at all Max was in fact a boy, between twelve and thirteen years old, and entirely human..."_

Angelo grasped the strange combination of words quite well, although he owed his understanding of figurative language and other oddities to the infamous Lady Leelandredloomsagwinaechegesima, the ruiner of many an Otherstide in the House of Redlooms.

_"Well, Max, it seems you've landed yourself in another adventure. At the beginning of the mystery..."_

Soon he found himself constantly flipping through pages, always just starting, always just ending, only to start reading again.

_"Rain fell that night, a fine whispering rain..."_

_"...Gabriel Lacroix ran, not daring to look back, running not from the howling winds of the storm, but toward them..."_

_" 'What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs by nightfall?' the sphinx asked._

_'It's a man.' Anji Kapoor replied without hesitation. She knew the answer, but the question's predictability made everything seem even less real..."_

Reality beckoned from somewhere beyond the printed pages. He left their ranks and found himself in the library of the TARDIS once more, a maze of shelves and dark stained wood. A fire blazed in the hearth, and a lamp lit the back of the book in front of him. He yawned, stood, and made his way to bed.  
Tomorrow, he would be braving the city streets.

The TARDIS landed with a faint thunk, just another taxi that managed to appear at the least convenient time possible. It passed several people before stopping in front of a park entrance, letting its three passengers off at Central Park, the city's central park.  
The three of them had no issue remembering that fact. The real problem was remembering not to stare at everything.  
There were people, hundreds of alien people. They were people, only people, wearing clothes quite unlike what they were accustomed to. They knew some of the styles because they were wearing them- Jeans and T-shirts, sweaters and sneakers -but that did not mean they found it any less bizarre.  
Bernadette pointed to a torn advertisement on the ground with a group of humans holding what appeared to be musical instruments.  
"GHOSTS OF PASHA" it announced proudly.  
"What's a _pasha_?" Bernadette asked.  
Angelo shrugged. "It's just a name. It doesn't really matter, I think."  
They kept waking, their pace a stroll,  
taking in the sight of trees decked in autumn leaves and weathered statues that flanked the path.  
After some bit of walking, they found themselves standing in Bethesda Terrace, staring up at the fountain, tall and graceful. An angel stood at its top, letting water cascade down around its dark majesty with a whisper of sound. It collected below, dark, but maybe once white, with only the copper shine of pennies to color it.  
Talitha walked around it, taking in its minute details.  
It made a gurgling sound.  
She walked under arches, looking up at blue and gold tiled ceilings. Worn carvings, the echoing snap of recorded camera shutters on phones. Tile, light, and dark.  
She left.  
She sat on a step beside Bernadette and Angelo. They sat in silence until she sighed and begrudgingly broke it.  
"Can I admit something?"  
They nodded, already knowing what she was going to say.  
"I thought this would be way more interesting."  
"No kidding." Angelo said flatly.  
"Like, we learned a whole language just so we could walk around and stare at things?"  
"Welcome to America." Bernadette replied.  
"Actually," Angelo interrupted, "The English-speaking population of this planet is so insistent on using this mess of a language that they will use it even after moving to different continents, planets, and solar systems."  
"You say in English." Bernadette muttered. "But I still can't get over those random words like-"  
"Boulevard." Talitha said.  
Bernadette winced. "Yes, the random loanwords."  
"Extraordinaire."  
She stood, making her way up to the balcony above. "Okay Tally, stop."  
"Renaissance." Talitha said, following  
"By Rassilion, I'm going to punch you."  
She smirked. "So just _riposte_."  
Bernadette raised her fists then lowered them, unable to hold back her laughter.  
"I risked life and limb to get that out of you." Talitha said. "You never seem to laugh anymore."  
"That's not true." Bernadette said. "I laugh when you're around."  
"But when I'm not looking." she said, "I don't want you to be so sad."  
Bernadette looked out at the courtyard, leaning on the stone carved railing, trading the view of its carefully designed flowers, squares, and swirls for the sight of the people by the lake below. Children went past with balloons tied to their wrists by parents who held their hands, golden in the light of the autumn afternoon.  
She sighed. "Sometimes I think I think too much."  
"Then don't think." Angelo said simply. "Just don't look back, like it's never-neverland."  
"Was that what it was called?" Talitha asked.  
"Don't ask me," Angelo replied, "I fell asleep halfway through the movie." He sat, watching the reds and blues of the balloons draw near a central point. Angelo pointed to them. "Why don't we go down and see what all that fuss is about? You two always like to stick your noses into things."  
It was true that they did.  
The fuss was about a magic show, one that was apparently unexpected but quite welcomed. A man had made a large blue box appear out of nowhere, turning Bethesda Terrace into his stage.  
The children clapped and the young man bowed, causing his floppy brown hair and red bow tie to be knocked askew. The crowd enjoyed his awkward embarrassment all the more. He pulled a large hat from his small pockets and a few people tossed coins in. Talitha, Angelo, and Bernadette had no money of the proper currency to give, but they wouldn't have given it anyway.  
They could see right through him.  
They could sense the time vortex on the "police box" just as well as any sailor could smell the sea on a ship.  
They knew he was a time traveler from the moment they laid eyes on him, but they only had one question about him: Why was he was calling so much attention to himself?  
While it was true that the best place to hide was in plain sight, even those words of wisdom had their limits.  
Talitha stared. "Bernadette, you know how we only know one person this dumb?"  
"Well, there are a lot of stupid time travellers."  
"But stupid _Gallifreyan_ time travellers?"  
Bernadette sighed. "You have a point. It probably is that one idiot."  
"Who?" Angelo asked.  
"Theta Sigma Lungbarrowmas." the girls replied, saying the name as if it was one of the greatest annoyances they had experienced in their short lives. In fact, he was.  
Theta Sigma Lungbarrowmas was a professional half-wit, slacker, and prankster, and was once considered a friend. That was before the consequences of his wild actions caught up with him. They hadn't seen him since then, but it had been rumored that he'd gone renegade, as well as a few other things. It seemed quite plausible that he would reappear as quickly as he had vanished, in the center of it all, just like the time he had brought an impromptu rock band into the first year mathematics class.  
"Oh." Angelo said simply. "That guy. Tally, aren't you two related or something?"  
"Unfortunately yes." Bernadette replied.  
Talitha grinned. "Cousin Thete is the best."  
"Both our families banned us from playing with him." Bernadette retorted.  
"Because he was the best!" Talitha shot back. "Besides..." She trailed off, realizing that the conversation was missing a contributor. "Angelo, are you okay?"  
The boy was still staring at the man, who was drawing smiles onto balloons and twisting smaller ones into dogs, swords, and crowns, while telling their recipients to play nice.  
Angelo, however, did not seem interested in getting a balloon. "Do you think he knows how the war ends?"  
"You know you're not supposed to ask that sort of thing." Bernadette said. "You're usually against it."  
"My parents are fighting in that war." Angelo replied. "I know the rules, but I want to know if they'll come back."  
"You can try asking mom later." Talitha offered. "She's a TARDIS, she knows things like that."  
"Guardian is not my mother." Angelo growled.  
"Okay, okay, we'll ask the idiot then." Talitha replied, pulling Angelo along by the hand until his tight fist loosened to hold her hand in return.

The idiot was a kind soul. He gave Angelo a balloon and sent him on his way, giving him no time to ask any questions regarding intergalactic wars and possible genocide. It was the greatest disappointment in the young boy's life, at least from his perspective.  
Bernadette led him away, as if that had been her plan all along. She knew that no one in the right mind would address such a subject in public, or possibly ever. The war had always nothing more than a subject to be skirted around, avoided, and ignored in any possible way. That was the only thing that had made it bearable for a time, so that was the only thing that they knew.

The distance between them grew, spanning the length of Bethesda Terrace, where they could see the lake glisten in the light of the afternoon. They stopped atop the steps, looking back for a moment for the familiar stranger.  
They didn't have to, as he spotted them first.  
"Excuse me," he said, "I'm the Doctor. Have we met before?"  
The children stared.  
"Don't tell me. Was it New Jupiter or Satellite Five?"  
"Neither." Talitha replied.  
"Oh." he said, his confidence lost. "Then where-"  
If Bernadette had known that Angelo would answer, she would have stopped him. But she didn't.  
The word "Gallifrey" hung in the air, heavy and dark.  
The fountain gurgled, humans chatted, but the four Gallifreyans only stood in silence.  
The Doctor spoke first. "Oh." Was all he said.  
That was all. They looked at one another, a flurry of unspoken questions flying between them.  
_"How did you leave?"_  
"Why are you here?"  
"How old are you? How long has it been?"  
"Are you alright?"  
And finally, "Are _they?_ "  
It was spoken, the one forbidden question, by Angelo. It was answered and it always was:  
"I can't say."  
They were walking away, Bernadette dragging Angelo along, while the Doctor stared down at his shoes, trying to process what had happened. He was alone for so long, met with the impossible, then hastily abandoned.  
"Why!" he called after them.  
Talitha turned. "Because we don't want to know."  
Angelo looked up at her. "But I want to know."  
"No, you don't." Bernadette said.

"Have you seen Talitha?" Bernadette asked, taking a seat beside the TARDIS console.  
The Star Room came to Bernadette’s mind, so she went there and found who she was looking for.  
“Remember when we used to chase each other around this place?” Talitha asked. She didn’t look up from her seat on the glassy floor. Her fingers traced the constellations on the floor, snapping their strings and allowing them to form new and unfamiliar shapes. She sighed. “We were so intent on ignoring.”  
“Ignoring what?” Bernadette asked.  
“Everything.” Talitha replied, looking up at her. “We were so intent on ignoring everything that the truth came as a surprise.”  
“I wouldn’t say it was a surprise, exactly.” Bernadette admitted. “You always knew we were more or less doomed, I always knew that you liked running away from things, and Angelo knew-” She paused. “I don’t know what Angelo knows.”  
Talitha laughed. “Because that would be too convenient.” Her smile faded. “But I feel so guilty for enjoying this, for enjoying running.”  
“There’s nothing wrong with finding the best in a bad situation.”  
“But this… This is different.” she said. “This is just downright irreverent.”  
“Since when were you reverent?”  
“Since never, but shouldn’t I be mourning?”  
Bernadette sat down beside her. “Look at me. Count how many things you lost, all the things you can never get back.”  
She stared. “Nothing.”  
“How much of your family have you lost recently?”  
“Just my dad.”  
“Did you care for him?”  
“Not particularly.”  
“Then you have nothing to feel bad about.”  
“But what about my friends? My friends other than you?”  
“Have you talked to them lately?”  
“No.” she admitted.  
They sat in silence for a time.  
“Bernadette?”  
“Yeah?”  
“I’m an idiot.”  
Bernadette laughed. “Tell me something I don’t know.”  
Talitha stood. “Well, you might not know what I’m going to do next.”

Angelo had been counting, and so far the total number to streets jaywalked was 24.  
Or jay _ran_ , since Talitha was running yet again.  
“Have you noticed how you don’t notice what you have until you don’t have it?” Talitha said, her voice competing with the sound of traffic, subways, and pedestrian chatter. “Because I just realized that I left someone I shouldn’t have!”  
She sped over a curb and onto the path into the park, the sudden end of the skyscrapers forming a cross-section of the city behind them. Bernadette and Angelo followed suit.  
They flew past tree-lined halls and mosaic walls, words and music accosting their ears.  
_“Stand over there and I’ll-”_  
“Take your time, we don’t have to be and Union Square until-”  
They were looking out at the fountain and its inky black water, scanning the Bethesda Terrace for a trace of blue.  
A new group of tourists had come and gone, mixed in with the occasional dog-walker to the side. The enigmatic blue box had vanished just as it had come, without explanation and with a volley of questions.  
The children stayed put, waiting until the single sun began to set, or until they forgot the purpose of their outing.  
“So cute...” Talitha muttered, staring at a fluffy white dog that followed at the heels of purple-haired teen.  
“How many colors do pigeons come in?” Angelo asked.  
Bernadette shrugged.  
“How do humans color their hair so many ways?” Talitha asked. “It’s kinda cool.”  
“Talithayevestrandaveri, you are _not_ going to dye your hair.” someone behind them said.  
The children turned from their place on terrace.  
“Hi mom!” Talitha and Bernadette with a smile.  
Angelo rubbed his eyes. “Hello Guardian.”  
“Goodness, it’s past your bedtime.”  
The timeship was met with a chorus of complaints.  
“But I didn’t get to see everything!” Talitha said.  
“That’s because you were looking for things that can’t be found. Besides, it would take centuries to see everything in a place this large.”  
“We have time.” Bernadette said.  
The TARDIS smirked. “I’m not so sure about that. Can a person _have_ time?”  
Bernadette rolled her eyes. “No, I meant it as in the English phrase, the one where you can.”  
Guardian held the children’s hands and carried Angelo on her shoulders, escorting out of the park before dark. “So, if that’s so, how much time did we start with?”  
“I don’t know.”  
“No, you tell me. Give me an exact number.”  
“How could I do that?”  
“It’s easy. Just count to infinity. Zero, one, two...”  
“Exi, uli, noi…”  
“Tally, no.”  
“Tally yes.”  
“English, please.”  
“Six?”  
“From where I left off.”  
“Five?”  
“Now we have a problem.”  
“So can we come back here again?” Talitha asked.  
“Not until you learn your numbers.”  
“Come on, please…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The books Angelo "read" included Down the Mysterly River by Bill Willingham, Inkheart by Cornelia Funke, and Earthworld by Jacqueline Rayner. And yes, Earthworld is a part of Doctor Who canon, but for all intents and purposes we will pretend it was a completely different book.


End file.
